Sally Cook plans to resign her seat on Salem City Council soon, she informed City Manager Steve Powers on Thursday.

The 39-year-old councilor said the sudden death of her husband three months ago and reality of being a single mother of two led to her decision.

“I need to be able to spend time with my family. It really is a large commitment, being a city councilor,” she told Salem Reporter. “I love the work. I am interested in doing more, but right now my family needs me more.”

With election season’s official start Thursday, Cook’s resignation adds another wrinkle to Salem City Council. The council will appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of her term, which expires Dec. 31, 2020.

Jason was only 42. I got to know him through our participation in self-defense classes at Pacific Martial Arts. It was a shock for me and my fellow classmates to hear of his untimely death. My heart goes out to Sally, who is a wonderfully kind and caring woman.

Given the current makeup of the City Council, six progressives and three conservatives, seemingly Cook's appointed replacement will be a progressive like her.

I'd guess that this person will be chosen with an eye toward them running for the Ward 7 seat in the May 2020 primary election (if a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the primary, they become the city councilor, which usually happens). But political guesses often turn out to be wrong.

Salem City Councilor Brad Nanke will not seek reelection in 2020, planning to cap a nearly two-decade run representing southeast Salem after his term concludes.

Nanke, in his fifth term on the council, has more than a year left to influence policy: His current term ends Dec. 31, 2020.

"Five is enough," he told the Statesman Journal on Thursday.

...Nanke is regarded as a more conservative voice on the council. His wife was one member of the conservative talk radio duo that hosted "The Gator & Denise Show," which used to broadcast locally on KYKN.

Given Nanke's rightward political leaning, I'm not a fan of him in that regard. However, anyone who soldiers on as an unpaid city councilor for as long as Nanke has deserves a standing ovation, no matter what side of the aisle they favor (actually, there are no aisles for city councilors, since they sit on two edges of a box-shaped area).

Sure, the Mayor and City Council races are nominally non-partisan. But these days there is very little about politics that isn't partisan on some level, even though much of what the City Council does is nuts and bolts stuff involving keeping the machinery of city government working smoothly.

Recently I heard a city councilor say that about 80% of what they do is in that mostly non-controversial category, while about 20% has liberal/conservative overtones where the political heat is turned up higher. That seems about right to me.

Progressive Salem will be involved in the four City Council seats up for election in 2020. The other two seats are Cara Kaser's Ward 1 seat and Matt Ausec's Ward 5 seat. Kaser and Ausec are both progressives.

It's always an open question to what extent a City Council candidate should focus on their general political leaning, versus talking about specific goals for Salem and their neighborhood. Of course, it's possible to do both -- something that makes sense to me, especially in 2020, a presidential election year.

Both progressives and conservatives are going to be fired up about the national election. Since Salem leans decidedly liberal, I'm hoping that the progressive City Council candidates will do a lot of talking about the positive things that their council majority has accomplished locally.

August 27, 2019

I watched some of Trump's hugely insane press conference after the G-7 summit on my iPhone. It was deeply disturbing.

He made just about zero sense, blabbing on and on, for example, about Putin being kicked out of the G-8 because Obama felt something or other -- completely failing to recognize that Putin was ousted because he took over Crimea in defiance of international law.

Then Trump blabbed on and on about how wonderful it was that the United States was extracting more oil, gas, and coal from the ground after being asked about his skepticism regarding climate change, and what he planned to do about it.

He walked off the stage while the reporter could be heard plaintively saying, "You didn't answer my question."

Just when I think Trump can't act worse than he already has, he surpasses his worseness. I just scrolled down the Washington Post page to remind myself of some of his recent WTF?! moments. They include, but aren't limited to...

Well, here's one more thing I strongly suspect Trump doesn't want. Having his ass kicked by a woman in the 2020 presidential election.

That's why I just donated $250 to Elizabeth Warren's campaign. I also like Kamala Harris, but Warren has come to seem like a more viable candidate to me. Her polling is gaining strength. Her policy positions are appealing and plentiful. She projects an air of strength, confidence, and winnability.

There's a long way until the Democratic nomination is settled. I'll be fine with anyone who takes on Trump. I simply felt good sending some money Warren's way, because in this age of Trumpism, it's important to find bright spots in all the darkness Trump exudes.

August 11, 2019

We here at the world headquarters of the Salem Political Snark blog -- located, appropriately enough, in Salem, Oregon -- strongly believe in citizens being actively involved in politics.

One great way to do this is by contributing to political campaigns.

So when a fellow patriot shared with me a spreadsheet of Salem donors to President Trump's re-election campaign, information that is publicly available via the Federal Election Commission, I had two strong reactions.

(1) I'm so clueless about spreadsheets, it's damn impressive that someone was able to combine donations to the Trump Make American Great Again Committee and the Donald J. Trump for President Committee into a single file. Miraculous!

(2) I need to thank these Trump supporters in a blog post for their service to our democracy.

I believe I succeeded in correctly copying in the names of the 77 Salem residents who have donated to the above-mentioned committees since January 1 of 2018.

If my senior citizen eyes missed a donor, consult the spreadsheet file I worked with. (Note: the aggregated amounts are in a separate tab.)Download Salem Trump Contributors

Following is an alphabetical list of the reported Salem contributors to the Trump Make American Great Again Committee and the Donald J. Trump for President Committee.

I've honored the top ten contributors by putting their names in red. Again, this is public information, as a recent Vox story makes clear.

That story describes how donors come to be listed in Federal Election Commission reports: "Once contributions add up to more than $200 during a two-year cycle to a certain candidate, then campaigns have to report them to the FEC, including the amount, date of receipt, and the contributor’s name, address, occupation, and employer."

May 08, 2019

A little while ago I watched the House Judiciary Committee vote to hold the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, in contempt of Congress. This is only the second time in our nation's history that an A.G. has gotten a contempt citation.

It's a big deal. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chair of the committee, just told reporters that we're now in a constitutional crisis.

The Trump administration is refusing to honor every subpoena Congress issues. The Trump administration refuses to allow Robert Mueller to testify about the report he issued into Russian interference with the 2016 election, how Trump officials interacted with that Russian effort, and Trump's efforts to obstruct the Mueller investigation. The Trump administration has declared that the entire Mueller Report is subject to executive privilege, which is legal bullshit.

So this has gone way beyond the usual fights between the Executive and Legislative branches of government. Trump and his cronies are refusing to recognize Congress as a co-equal branch within our republic.

Plenty of people, including Nadler, if I recall his news conference correctly, are saying that we're well on the way to becoming a banana republic ruled by a strong man who refuses to abide by long-established norms of presidential behavior.

Problem is, our system of government is largely based on those norms.

Sure, laws and the Constitution are important. But equally important has been unwritten norms such as: the president speaks truthfully most of the time; Congressional oversight isn't stonewalled; a free press is encouraged, not disparaged; subpoenas from Congress are taken seriously, not rejected entirely.

Impeachment is the strongest weapon Congress has to constrain abuses of presidential power.

Yet it is clear that Senate Republicans would never vote in favor of an impeachment resolution sent over by the House. Further, impeachment isn't favored by most Americans, though beginning impeachment-related investigtions is more popular.

Why attempt to impeach, though, when impeachment would never happen? I realize the emotional appeal of impeachment. What Trump is doing is beyond bad. It is despicable. All presidents behave badly at times. Trump is the first president who truly is acting like a wanna-be dictator.

The courts are another check on presidential power.

However, lawsuits by Congress and others likely would take many months, if not years, to be settled. And even if a favorable court decision happened earlier, who is going to make the Trump administration act in accord with it?

Attorney General Barr has sacrificed himself onto the altar of Full-Out Trumpian Acquiescence, like so many other Republicans.

When the head of the Justice Department isn't interested in pursuing even-handed justice, but acts like the president's personal attorney, and the Supreme Court seems to be firmly in Trump's camp, it's hard to be optimistic about the American legal system being a serious check on Trump's dictatorial ambitions.

This is why my reasonable side says focus on the 2020 election, while my emotional side says impeach the S.O.B.

Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, had some provocative tweets today that resonated with me. They were in response to someone who argued that Nancy Pelosi isn't being a bold enough leader.

The big issue, I think, is that the House Democrats have to decide what they’re going to do about their relative lack of power, compared to the executive branch, and they may have to do that sooner rather than later. Pelosi can try to continue to stake out a middle ground, but they are running up against some big structural limitations — and I agree that impeachment lite is not a workable strategy in the long term.

It seems like the central challenge for Democrats is: Can you run on normalcy and basically treat Trump as an aberration? Or do you have to deal with the structural problems his presidency is exposing? The latter, of course, is incredibly hard to do.

By "impeachment lite," I believe this person meant that Democrats do as much investigating into wrongdoing by Trump as possible, but hold off on actually trying to impeach him. The obvious problem with this is that the more wrongdoing that's discovered, the harder it becomes to ignore it -- and accompanying calls from the Democratic base to impeach Trump.

Here's the way I see things.

I ask myself a couple of questions: (1) What if the Dems attempt to impeach Trump and he wins re-election in 2020? Would I be happy? Answer is NO. I don't want Trump impeached. I want him out of office ASAP. (2) What if the Dems don't try to impeach Trump and he loses re-election in 2020? Would I be happy? YES. Deliriously.

This shows that, along with most Democrats and a large share of independents, what I most care about is Trump being kicked out off office in the 2020 election. Impeachment is secondary. If it helps accomplish a Trump defeat, great. If it doesn't, not great.

Another way of putting it is, what's the core problem facing our country?

I'm optimistic enough to say that it really is Donald Trump, not a desire among Republicans and Trump voters to refashion our constitutional democracy into a banana republic ruled by a succession of strong men (and maybe women).

So in line with the FiveThirtyEight quote above, I'm inclined to view Trump as an aberration. A dangerous aberration, yes. An aberration who has to be fought mightily, yes. But an aberration that can be out of office in January 2021 if Democrats play their cards right between now and the 2020 election.

Impeachment proceedings would suck all of the air out of the news cycle.

Even if Democrats want to talk about Trump's latest attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, further enrich the already wealthy, engage in unneeded trade wars, screw up our relationships with long-time allies, promote hateful immigration policies, ignore the dangers of climate change, and such, impeachment will be front and center in voters' minds until the Senate votes to absolve Trump.

Which will lead Trump to scream another witch hunt at the top of his lungs just before the 2020 election, most likely.

Instead, I favor the Democrats saying, "We're not going to impeach Donald Trump in Congress. Instead, the voters are going to have the opportunity to remove him from office in November 2020. Yes, we believe he has engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors. We just want you, the American public, to make the decision to deny him a second term."

April 18, 2019

For a political junkie like me, today's non-stop coverage of William Barr's embarrassingly awful press conference and subsequent analysis of the redacted Mueller report has felt like taking a really long hot shower that leaves you both blissfully exhausted and pleasantly energized.

I've read the tweets. I've looked over Washington Post and New York Times stories. I've listened to much of what MSNBC had to offer, while fast forwarding through repetitive or uninteresting parts. I've scanned some of the report.

Here's what leaps out at me after the initial coverage of the lengthy Mueller report.

Barr should be impeached. Likely he won't be, but some smart political analysts have suggested this as a seemingly foolproof way for Democrats to get the unredacted Mueller report. It's clear that Attorney General Barr lied in his initial four-page letter about the Mueller report. He mischaracterized the report's findings and is now acting like Trump's personal attorney, rather than as the leader of a Justice Department that serves the American people, not the president.

Mainstream media has been vindicated. Despite Trump's inane claims of "fake news," virtually everything that's been reported about the Mueller investigation over the past few years turns out to have been true. This includes commentators who argued that collusion occurred between Russia and the Trump campaign, and that Trump engaged in obstruction of justice. Both things happened.

Collusion, yes; conspiracy, no. Above is a screenshot from page 2 of the Mueller report. Trump and Barr have been (figuratively) screaming No collusion! However, Mueller made clear that collusion, or even coordination, don't have settled definitions in federal criminal law.

In the excerpt above, he strongly implies that the Trump campaign did engage in actions that "were informed by or reponsive to" actions and interests of Russians, along with WikiLeaks. There wasn't an agreement between the Russian government and the Trump campaign regarding election interference. But there was a heck of a lot of collusion between Russians and people associated with the campaign.

Russian interference in the election is undeniable. Page 1 of the report makes this clear, as shown above. The Russians favored trump and disparaged Clinton. Russia stole documents from the Clinton campaign, which then were released by WikiLeaks.

And there were numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Paul Manafort provided polling data to Russians relating to key midwest battleground states that Trump won with the aid of Russian disinformation efforts through social media.

Trump engaged in obstruction of justice. Mueller provides ten pieces of evidence relating to obstruction of justice. Yet he didn't issue an opinion on this part of the investigation. Instead, it's clear from the report that Mueller left it up to Congress to decide what to do on this front, since a sitting president can't be indicted on this charge (or maybe any charge).

So Barr lied when he claimed in his four-page report that Mueller's failure to say that Trump engaged in obstruction of justice had nothing to do with the fact that a president can't be indicted. Actually, that fact was the main reason Mueller left it up to Congress to decide how to handle the obstruction charges.

Trump encouraged people to lie. He repeatedly tried to get Mueller fired. He did fire Comey, the Attorney General at the time. There's compelling evidence that Trump obstructed justice. Fortunately, he didn't succeed, but not for lack of trying. The only question is how House Democrats should hold him accountable for this.

Impeachment seems more likely, though not inevitable. Until today I'd been thinking that impeachment was off the table for Democrats. However, the Mueller report contains so much damning information about Trump (much of it already known, but not clearly packaged), it's hard to see how Trump should be allowed to get off without further investigations of some sort.

If Congress doesn't serve as a check on how Trump has been abusing presidential power, future presidents will be tempted to further expand the boundaries of criminality and unethical behavior. Sure, politically impeachment may be a bad idea that would help Trump's re-election chances. But holding oversight hearings could be the next best thing.

Investigations are ongoing. Even a cursory review of the report shows numerous mentions of "Harm to Ongoing Matter," or HOM -- such as this section regarding the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.

So while Trump may hope that the Mueller investigation is behind him, spinoff investigations continue. Plus, there are several other investigations by both federal and state authorities into possible wrongdoing by Trump and his companies. We're at the end of a beginning, but likely not at the beginning of the end.

Sleaze and bad behavior. All of the evidence in the Mueller report about sleazy, unethical, and generally bad behavior by Trump and his cronies would cause massive headlines in every newspaper if so much of this hadn't already been reported on. There's no doubt that the Trump presidency is deeply flawed, to put it mildly.

Ordinarily, the White House press secretary lying about staff in the Justice Department being pleased with Comey's firing would lead to a firing. Or at least an abject apology. But Sanders lies so often about everything, as do many others in the Trump administration, we've gotten used to this crap -- in line with the frog slowly boiling in water analogy.

Like a Mafia crime family, Trump has been able to get away with (non-literal) murder because his fingerprints aren't directly on the crime scene. And the Mueller report says that people associated with Trump were able to delete electronic evidence, or hide it on encrypted devices, which made it difficult to investigate certain areas.

Hopefully the Democratic leadership in Congress will be able to find a way to do the right thing for our country, while also doing the right thing for the Democrat 2020 nominee to beat Trump. Impeachment may not be the best option, but doing nothing about the deeply disturbing Mueller report findings also isn't an option.

March 24, 2019

Sorry, Trump supporters. I realize you think the Mueller report finding no collusion with Russia justifies a victory lap, with images of disappointed Democrats dancing through your heads.

Think again.

I'm a Democrat who is feeling pretty darn good right now. Here's four reasons why.

(1) Impeachment is even less likely now. Democratic leaders in Congress haven't been pushing for impeachment of Trump. Nancy Pelosi has said that she is against starting impeachment proceedings unless there's a bipartisan consensus in favor of this. Which will never happen.

I suspect that impeachment now is even less likely, since apparently there's no smoking gun evidence against Trump in the Mueller report. This is good news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans -- since impeachment would fire up the GOP base in the 2020 election.

(2) Obstruction of justice remains a hot issue. Well-informed legal analysts on MSNBC made some great arguments about Mueller's lack of a conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice. Attorney General Barr said that he independently concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to justify an obstruction of justice case.

This was a dubious thing for Barr to do.

He is a Trump appointee. He wrote a 19 page memo in 2018 arguing that likely Trump couldn't be found to have obstructed justice. So his credibility on this issue is very low. Democrats will surely question Barr in an open committee hearing about his conclusion in today's 4-page Mueller report summary regarding obstruction of justice. This will keep the issue alive.

(3) Good stuff for Dems likely lies in the report. Barr only included a few brief direct quotes from Mueller's report in the summary he released today. I suspect once Congressional Democrats are able to read the report itself, hopefully along with the underlying documents, quite a bit of good stuff for Dems and bad stuff for Trump will come to light.

This will be especially true on the obstruction of justice front, but it's hard for me to believe that additional evidence of contacts with Russians by people associated with the Trump campaign isn't in Mueller's report. Maybe this doesn't rise to the level of collusion or conspiracy. It sure won't make Trump look good, though.

(4) Other investigations continue on. Legal analysts are fond of saying that the Mueller investigation likely is the least of Trump's worries. The Southern District of New York is delving into issues that could end up being much more serious for Trump, building in part on Michael Cohen's cooperation with investigators regarding Trump's shady financial dealings, the Stormy Daniels payoff just before the 2016 election. etc.

Trump is going to be in legal trouble all the way through election day 2020, most likely. Maybe his base won't be bothered by this. Probably independent voters will be, though. I remain confident that Trump is going to be a one-term president. He can proclaim all he wants about "No collusion!" but this won't be the issue that decides the election.

Rather, Trump's lack of character and his bad policies will lead to a Democrat being elected president in 2020.

February 08, 2019

Yesterday I walked around downtown Salem before and after my 6 pm Tai Chi class.

On Court Street I saw several people lying on sidewalk benches, completely covered in gray blankets that I assume had been given out in anticipation of the next round of cold, snowy weather.

On Commercial Street I saw others in sleeping bags lying on the sidewalk in the doorways of businesses that had closed for the day.

My core feeling was, How can it be that the United States is so uncaring about citizens living on the street?

It just seems so wrong, so very wrong, that while our country has made a commitment to educate every child at public expense through high school, has gone a long way toward guaranteeing access to health care for everybody (though Trump is doing his best to undermine the Affordable Care Act), and puts considerable money into making sure few people go hungry, there is no comparable societal consensus on making sure everyone has a home.

Education, health care, having food to eat -- most would say that these are fundamental human rights. Shouldn't having a place to live also be a fundamental right?

It seems crazy that along with every other city in the United States, Salem has to struggle to find a solution to homelessness mostly on its own. Sure, there are federal housing programs for low-income people. But if these were a cure-all, I wouldn't have seen people sleeping on the sidewalks of downtown Salem.

I have friends who are wonderfully committed to helping the homeless. They volunteer at warming shelters when the weather turns cold. They do what they can to feed the homeless and are part of efforts to provide more affordable housing.

All that is praiseworthy. I deeply admire the many people in Salem who are dedicated to making the lives of the homeless better.

However, as positive as these efforts are, I keep thinking that individual acts of charity are as limited in solving our country's homelessness problem as they would be if children lacking a school had to rely on the "kindness of strangers" to get an education.

In his recent State of the Union speech, President Trump spoke about how he doesn't want the United States to become a socialist nation. To which I respond, OK, but we can emulate success stories of countries like Finland when it comes to combatting homelessness.

In the last year in the UK, the number of people sleeping rough rose by 7%. In Germany, the last two years saw a 35% increase in the number of homeless while in France, there has been an increase of 50% in the last 11 years.

There, the number of homeless is steadily decreasing. So what have they been doing differently?

The Finns have turned the traditional approach to homelessness on its head.

There can be a number of reasons as to why someone ends up homeless, including sudden job loss or family breakdown, severe substance abuse or mental health problems. But most homelessness policies work on the premise that the homeless person has to sort those problems out first before they can get permanent accommodation.

Finland does the opposite - it gives them a home first.

...Housing First works so well because it is a mainstream national homelessness policy with a common framework, according to Juha Kaakinen, Chief executive of Y-Foundation, a social enterprise that provides housing to Housing First. It involves a wide partnership of people: the state, volunteers, municipalities and NGOs.

“All this costs money,” admits Kaakinen. “But there is ample evidence from many countries that shows it is always more cost-effective to aim to end homelessness instead of simply trying to manage it. Investment in ending homelessness always pays back, to say nothing of the human and ethical reasons.”

Salem is trying to manage homelessness because seemingly this is the only option available to City officials. The City of Salem budget already is facing multi-million dollar deficits. It's very unlikely that local revenues would be enough to implement a Housing First approach here that would end homelessness.

A statewide Housing First program in Oregon might be feasible. But not in the foreseeable future, given other legislative priorities. So it seems that the best bet is for Democrats to take back the White House and both houses of Congress in the 2020 election.

The United Staes is rich enough to provide a safety net for everybody in this country. What is lacking isn't money, but the will to do this. My hope is that the current Trump era is just a four-year detour on the road that leads to genuine compassion for the less fortunate among us.